Posted by Jerry Stuckle on 09/23/07 12:21

Shelly wrote:
> "Sanders Kaufman" <bucky@kaufman.net> wrote in message
> news:D7nJi.124$ua4.45@newssvr22.news.prodigy.net...
>> "Shelly" <sheldonlg.news@asap-consult.com> wrote in message
>> news:13fb0rcom0qur6e@corp.supernews.com...
>>> Here is a situation that I have to think out for a potential customer.
>>> Currently he receives about 150 emails a day with pdf attachments for
>>> orders. The format of the pdfs are all the same. Now he has to:
>>>
>>> 1 - look at his email
>>> 2 - open the pdf
>>> 3 - manually take the data from the pdf and enter it into an order
>>> processing mode and a database.
>>>
>>> This is taking so much of his time that he is considering hiring someone
>>> to do it.
>>>
>>> What I would like to be able to present him with is the following:
>>>
>>> 1 - Have all those emails go to a specified folder in his email
>>> 2 - Without opening the email, upload the attachment to a server
>>> 3 - Have an application that extracts the information from the pdf and
>>> then does what it has to do.
>>> 4 - Move the email to a second email folder (processed)
>>>
>>> I would like to have all this initiated with either a cron type job or
>>> via a "Go" button.
>>>
>>> Short of this ideal, I would have him look at an email in his reader and
>>> save the attachments to a directory. The "Go" button would upload button
>>> would then do the rest.
>>>
>>> There are also other compromises I can and probably will have to make. I
>>> posted the ideal.
>>> The main point is to cut the hyman time down considerably.
>>>
>>> Any suggestions?
>> Most of that stuff sounds pretty simple - but the PDF parsing might be
>> your deal-breaker.
>> You'll have to be a real PDF guru to do that.
>> Have you explored the PDF features in PHP?
>
> Actually, that's probably the easy part. There are inexpensive packages out
> there to that. What I would need is a command line application. The other
> stuff looks like the hard stuff to me.
>
> Shelly
>
>

Naw, even on a Unix server the email is easy. If it is unix, just get the admin
to pipe a copy of the email to your script.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

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